A poem in celebration of Whan That Aprille Day (http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/2014/03/maken-melodye-on-whan-that-aprille-day.html). Elizabethan English is the oldest tongue I can attempt with confidence.

WHAT TIME APRIL

What time April, with its pollen thick,
Doth make hale people wan and sick,
And batheth ev'ry nose in such ichor
As the wind flingeth from ev'ry flower,
When teeth do throb, and wretched eyeballs bake,
Ears clog, throats itch, and ev'ry part doth ache,
When small birds sing, while people snort and hack,
Oh, then folk long to beck fell winter back,
Whose blast they well could meet with windows tight,
And take a nip to numb the season's bite.

He Who

Is his life better, the anti-me who
says all that I smother? He's lost
more jobs, more friends, more lovers:
he's had more to lose. I have
what he will not: I stay.
One career, one home, one tribe.
He ends up always hated
for his nakedness; those
who surround me love,
deeply, my camouflage.

A stream of consciousness poem. Possibly one my therapist would find informative.

Dynastic Decline

﻿﻿the doorman of the forest fire
has come down in the world he once
composed sounds for power
tools and industrial machines
as his grandfather had for
steam engines and extinct birds

his brother is a hospital gnome
with a habit of hiding
in habits of addicts or nuns
he's cute and only
by moonlight looks sinister
he could easily find garden
work but will forgive
no plot that is not Eden

they've never seen their mother
who sells to tourists
mud from the graves
of killers and ivy
from their headstones
in a little shop
made of flannel
deep in the forest
filling with smoke

By day I see
only what light can show.
Darkness offers
strange worlds to me
above, below.
Night, soft
and dangerous, stalks
the day and brings him down.
She opens my ears and skin;
boundaries disappear.
I dissolve into shadows
with ash tree and lilac:
crickets and frogs
buzz within.
My thoughts run out
in black rills
across the grass.
Night takes from me
the burden of me,
and I don't know
but that I'll awaken as you.